At the Top

These are two post cards showing The Summit House on the top of Pikes Peak in Colorado as it was in the early 1900s.

In July of 1873, after the US Army sent a couple of scouting expeditions to the top of Pikes Peak it was agreed that it would be a perfect location to observe the weather in order to be able to perform better forecasts. Later that year a weather observatory was built with two rooms: an office & officer’s bedroom and a kitchen, storeroom and sleeping quarters for the other men. It was not very big (18 x 30 feet) but the walls were very thick (18 inches) to protect it from the weather they were going to observe all year round. It was officially opened on October 11th of that year. In 1882, the building was enlarged to accommodate the number of visitors they were receiving. In 1888, the weather observatory was closed.

In the meantime, Pikes Peak was gaining in popularity as a destination, so a railway was built to the summit. In 1889 a log cabin was added to the top of the mountain by an entrepreneur who wanted to sell things to the tourists. The first train arrived June 29, 1891.

In 1892 the owners of the railway renovated the signal station. When they were finished, what they now called “The Summit House” could hole up to 15 guests, a small cafeteria and a souvenir shop. Soon, it was upgraded to hold more people and more business.

About 10 years later The Summit House was again upgraded and expanded. This time, they added a tower at one end of the building. Soon, it was moved to the roof of The Summit House so those who paid the 25 cent entry fee could see in all directions from the top of the Peak. This is the building seen on the post cards.
The above information was gleaned from the website: http://pikespeak.us.com/Learn/history.html

If you would like to see what it is like at the top of Pikes Peak right now go to this website: http://www.keno.org/colorado_web_cams/pikes_peak_cams.htm

Both post cards are from the White Border Era (1915 - 1930). The top post card was printed by Curt Goerke from Colorado Springs. He was quite the entrepreneur himself. He discovered a rock formation that looked like a boulder balanced on one of its ends. During the 1890's at the age of 14 he began taking photographs of visitors to the rock for a quarter of a dollar each. Soon he was making so much money that his father Paul quit his job, learned photography, and bought Balanced Rock and nearby Mushroom Park for $400. By the first decade of the twentieth century, they were taking pictures of tourists - often seating them atop the four burros kept nearby. Curt published post cards of other tourist destinations in Colorado and advertised on those cards that the purchaser (and the receiver of the post card, if it was mailed) should see . Balanced Rock no longer was private property but became a part of the Garden of the Gods Park the early 1930's.

The little “M” in the coffee cup at the bottom, middle of the second post card represents the Miller Art Company out of Brooklyn, New York, the printer of this post card.They existed from 1921 to 1941. It was published by the Puffer Mercantile Company. This was a grocery store chain that was founded in the early 1900s by L.A. Puffer and Milo Rowell. L.A.’s son Harry continued in his father’s footsteps and helped the company to grow across the Midwestern United States.

Relatives or Coincidence?

Here are three more post cards from Pikes Peak in Colorado.

One can easily conclude from looking at the fronts of these three post cards that they are related – either all were printed by the same printer and sold to different publishers or, perhaps, a publisher “borrowed” the picture for its own use (a common practice in those days). But, one can certainly believe that these three cards are related to each other based on the fronts.

They are definitely all the same picture. They all have the same caption in the bottom right of the post card: “8408. Snow Drifts on Pike’s Peak Cog Road, Colo.” The captions are all in the same font. The only difference on the fronts of these cards is that the third card has a white border. That puts the top two cards in the Divided Back Era (1907-1915) and the bottom card in the White Border Era (1915-1930).

When we turn the post cards over and carefully examine the backs,

we can potentially draw the same conclusion as we do by looking at the fronts of these cards: that maybe they are inter-related.
The top two cards share the same fancy script and decorations around the words Post Card. The bottom two cards share the exact same wording describing the fronts of the post cards.

Here is my unscientific conclusion:
We learned in the last blog that the H.H. Tammen Company evolved between 1896 and 1953. Perhaps we are looking at some of the evolution right here on these three cards. The H.H. Tammen Company owned the picture. The post cards of this picture were might popular and worth reprinting several times. The first printing was simply the post card with the caption on the front and the reminder on the back that “This space can be used for a written message, using one-cent stamp”. The second printing included a longer description of the front of the card – a development in the history of picture post cards. The third printing included the name of the company and its cute “alien” mascot.

Development of the Linen Post Card

Continuing on the theme of Pikes Peak, I have scanned three post cards from the Linen Post Card era.

Two of these cards are from 1939 and 1941. Because the third one is postally unused, I cannot tell you the exact age of the card. Two of them are from the H.H. Tammen Company which existed from 1896 to 1953; the other is from the E. C. Kropp Company, which existed from 1907 to 1956.

I chose the top two, not because they share the same picture, but because they share the same picture on two different types of card stock.

The post card on the left is from the White Border Era (1915-1930). The card stock is smooth and shiny, although certainly not as shiny as a Chrome Post Card. The white border was developed on post cards for the printers and publishers to save money on the cost of ink. While printing on post card may not seem like a large savings, if one multiplies that amount of unprinted space by the millions of post cards printed during this era, it adds up to a huge savings.

The post card on the right looks like it is from the Linen Post Card Era (1930-1945). While saving money in the same manner as the previous era, the publishers added a quality to the post card. In a system of paper making adding rag content into the paper used for card stock, the paper took on a textured feeling. Rumor has it that Curt Otto Teich might have invented this style of card. If he didn’t invent it, he certainly perfected it!

This card is not from the Curt Teich Company. It is from the H.H. Tammen Company. I am not convinced that it is an actual Linen Post Card. As I hold it up to the light and feel the texture, I am thinking that the printer simply ran the card through a machine that texturized the card. I have tried to scan a close-up of the linen-style card so that you can see the texture difference. You can see a regular pattern of squares that have what look like indentations into the post card. These indents show best on the white border.

I think the H. H. Tammen Company either made linen cards of much lesser quality than the Curt Teich Company or did their best to imitate the look and feel of a linen card without going through the real process. So, when I hold the two H.H. Tammen cards from above next to each other, the quality difference is sort of obvious. But, when I hold this H.H. Tammen card next to a Curt Teich Linen Era Post Card the difference jumps out at me.

The H.H. Tammen Company was based in Denver, Colorado. It was founded by Harry Heye Tammen, who was born in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1881 he and his business partner started H.H. Tammen and Company. That name changed in 1896 when they added two more partners: Carl Litzenberger and Joseph Cox. The new company was called the H.H. Tammen Curio Company.

The bottom post card is included in this set simply because it, too, shows the Manitou and Pikes Peak Railway in the Spring with snow on either side of the tracks. It seems to have been taken from very close to where the other picture was taken. This post card was printed by the E. C. Kropp Company. The company was founded in 1907 and based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin until they were sold to L.L. Cook in 1956. E.C. Kropp began publishing and printing in 1898 but, became the E.C. Kropp Company in 1907. I understand that they produced some high quality linen cards, but I don’t have any in my train post card collection.

This post card was printed for the publisher “Garden of the Gods”, which is a tourist destination down the hill from Pikes Peak in Colorado. The story of the “Famous Balanced Rock” is interesting but not related to my train post cards other than the passing reference on this post card. You can read its story here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_of_the_Gods. These are the backs of the three cards.
There are only two pictures because the H.H. Tammen Company didn't change the back from one style of post card to the other. So, I chose this one because there is an official stamp at the top telling us that someone was up on the top of Pikes Peak on August 17, 1941. The other H.H. Tammen post card is postmarked from July 19, 1939 - just a few short months before World War II began with the invasion of Poland.

So Many Good Things...

There are so many good things about this post card. The first, of course, is that there is a picture of a train on it!!

The second good thing is the quality of the linen paper on which it is printed. It exudes quality. You can see and feel the linen easily. There is no doubting that there is texture to the surface of this card.

Thirdly, The quality of the print job. I can read the word "OBSERVATION" on the top of the observatory tower without a magnifying glass. The cogs in the middle of the two tracks are very clearly there. With a magnifying glass, I can read, "Manitou & Pikes Peak" on the side of the engine.

The back of the post card is just as wonderful. It very clearly states that this card was printed by the Curt Teich Company using their patented "C.T. Art-Colortone" method for the Sanborn Souvenir Company in Denver, Colorado.

Best of all, it actually dates the card for us!! The number above the word POST in POST CARD tells us this information. The card was printed in the 1930s (the letter A); 1937 to be exact (the number 7) and it was the 602nd print run of that year. The letter H confirms that yes, indeed, this is a linen post card. In 1937 there were 3,989 print runs of linen cards by the Curt Teich Company. Using mathematical principals of deduction, we can guess that this card was printed sometime near the end of February or the beginning of March of that year.

Oh, yeah. It is a very nice picture on the front, too.